TX

By Nikki Muñoz

Before he reached the age of 22, Ernesto Pedregón Martinez had already worked as a painter of bullfighting posters, helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp and returned home to start a new life, which would eventually lead to his becoming a nationally known artist.

Martinez was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1926 to a hardworking tailor and a mother who was a homemaker. Martinez proved to be a survivor: All six babies his mother bore died at birth before he was born.

By Denise Chávarri

In the Army, Agustin Lucio, a 10th-grade dropout from a farming community outside San Marcos, Texas, noticed that many other young soldiers were educated or had finished high school. So, while in training, he decided to educate himself, asking for books and learning from those around him.

After two years at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Lucio was sent to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, where he received elite Ranger and ski training. He would be sent to fight in Europe as part of the D-Day invasion.

By Antonio Gilb

In the first days of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, in Schmidt, Germany, American scouts reported that a division of German tanks and soldiers lay on the outskirts of town, ready to attack. To minimize casualties, officers hastily ordered the unit to abandon the area. But in their haste, the unit commanders left behind a handful of soldiers. Catarino Hernandez, an 18-year-old from Seguin, was among them.

By Beth Nottingham

Roberto Gonzalez had a Sunday tradition of listening to news about World War II on a big old radio in the living room with his dad, Catarino Gonzalez. Little did he know that his love of radio would be his ticket to making his father proud by serving his country.

By Raquel C. Garza

Julian L. Gonzalez didn’t walk the stage during the Thomas A. Edison graduation ceremonies in May of 1944. Instead, his father walked the stage in his place.

"It was announced that I wasn't there, that [my father] was receiving [my diploma] because I was in the service," Gonzalez said. "They told me that he got the biggest applause of anybody there."

Gonzalez had completed his high school education a semester early in order to be inducted into the armed services. He was inducted on March 20, 1944, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

By Liliana Martinez

When Jose Guadalupe Garza was in the 9th grade in Brownsville, Texas, in 1937, his Anglo teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.

"I told her I wanted to be a lawyer, but she told me that I wanted to fly too high because that career required a lot of money and I didn't have it," Garza said. "I got discouraged so I got out of school."

By Antonio Gilb

Thomas Galindo was working at an Austin drug store selling sodas for 35 cents when he heard the shocking report on the radio. It was news that would irrevocably change the 19-year-old's life.

The date was Dec. 7, 1941. Galindo heard the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

"I was getting close to that age," he said. He knew he was going to war.

By Stephen Stetson

Ernest Eguia spent a lifetime on the cutting edge. Rising above the crippling poverty of the Great Depression, Eguia was at the forefront of the Allied Invasion of Normandy during World War II and was also on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, pioneering the movement for Latino integration in the Houston area after the war.

By Jaime Margolis

When Elena De Peña was growing up, her parents emphasized the importance of a good education. Her father was a mechanic and her mother ran a grocery store in San Benito, Texas; De Peña said they set a good example for her and her siblings.

Born Elena Tamez, she and her sister Rosa wanted to be nurses after they graduated from high school, and their mother insisted they follow their dreams. They attended George Peabody University in Tennessee, where they received training in public health.

By Anita Rice

Hector De Peña never saw any action on the battlefield during World War II. He never stormed the beach at Normandy, never liberated the prisoners of Europe's concentration camps and never fired upon the Japanese or Germans. The war he fought was against the entrenched discriminatory practices used against Latinos during the time of the war.